Dyeing to be Pastel

This lovely little post is the story of a pair of pants born white wanting to be pastel.
The idea came from Lovely Kiera B. my longtime friend and roommate. She wanted some red pants (having some of my own, I only encouraged the idea). So we went off to Ross to buy some white skinnies for each of us.
We commenced dying the next day. Goal: Kiera Red, Shannon Mint.
Unfortunately mine had a disco ball on the back pockets so there was a little work to do before I started.

Fortunately they came off in like 5 minutes. Cheapest. Rhinestones. Ever. Really Ross!
here are the bedazzling's of only one pocket

I know right?
Then the next step was dying. Which of course accompanied triple layer brownies and a chic-flick. If you are going to do something, do it right--you know?
Before:

We did 2 methods: Washing machine and Stovetop.
Kiera’s red pants in the washing machine worked great. We reset the wash twice so that they could get jiggled around in the dye for the suggested 30 minutes. Result? Hot Red Pants in an excellent shade of tomato red. The only con? It dyed my machine pink. A load of bleach took most of it out and a white scrubbing sponge took out most of the rest though.
As for the mint ones? Well, the dying went well. I followed instructions mostly from a RIT package though. Be sure to get your clothing wet before putting it in the dye or else it will not absorb evenly. Also, I used a 98% cotton product, so it sucked up the color like a thirsty giraffe. I didn’t dye it as long as suggested. I bought tulip dye in teal (pale teal would be a nice mint right?). It turns out teal=sky blue, and the only one who cares is me because I am a color snob,  but you all knew that anyways. It will work perfectly for Kiera’s sister’s bridesmaid dresses, but not for my legs.

Exhibit A

Now this I'm sure would work for some people. Although, if you all of the sudden add a slightly unnatural hue to your wardrobe with consists mostly of pale pinks, creams, yellows and tomato reds you are going to be quite sorry. So I had to suck the day glow out of these pants--for the good of the wardrobe.
Also I was incredibly disappointed that the color was not the color advertised on the package…
The solution was to put it in the washing machine in a hot bath of bleached water. Bleach is a tricky thing, never expect it to bleach something just a lighter shade of the current hue, you will be disappointed. Almost always it will bleach yellowish or pinkish (or completely white). So I took a gamble-either it would add just the right amount of pale and yellow to turn these pants mint, or I would get a weird pinkish color.
I was lucky.

Tah-Dah! Now you can look at this blog-made fashion shoot of me wearing my pants, and yes it is true--I just put them on for the picture. But! Still don’t believe me that this looks better?

 VS.

Although, I won’t try to hard to convince you, because in the end it is really just opinion.
To pale-pant-fads that I whole heartedly endorse! Although not for $50 (Gap…)

Shannon